The Iowa Central Fuel Testing Laboratory is a place few people will visit, but its presence is a benefit to everyone in the state.

Drivers will be assured that the ethanol they pump into their cars and light trucks is good quality fuel, thanks to the work of the lab. Truckers across the state will know that the biodiesel they fill their rigs with will not gum up the engine, thanks to testing conducted at the new facility in Fort Dodge.

The Fort Dodge community is lucky to have the lab in its midst. Such a facility could have been built in pretty much any Midwestern state that, like Iowa, grows tons of corn and soybeans that are turned into ethanol and biodiesel.

A long list of individuals made it happen and those people were saluted Friday during a ribbon cutting for the new facility on A Street West.

Jim Kersten, the college’s vice president for government relations and external affairs, worked with people in government and in the private sector for decades to get the lab established. College President Jesse Ulrich described Kersten as the “most persistent human being I have ever known.”

Former state Sen. Daryl Beall, D-Fort Dodge, and former state Rep. Helen Miller, D-Fort Dodge, secured the initial state funding for lab equipment.

Jerry Fitzgerald, of Fort Dodge, was a lobbyist for the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, helped craft the legislative language that made sure the state funding for the lab came to Iowa Central and no other facility in the state.

Don Heck, the director of the lab, developed it from a small operation in an old campus greenhouse to the full-sized modern facility that debuted Friday.

A pair of land donations made it possible for the lab to be built where it is.

In 2011, Tom and Phyliis Cairney donated the property where the Colonial Inn once stood.

Then in 2022, Casey’s General Stores donated the land where one of its stores once stood.

The Cairneys and Casey’s General Stores did something notable and noble with those donations. They willingly gave away valuable property on a bustling commercial strip. They could have sold those properties for a nice profit.

A lot of people, organizations and partnerships made the fuel lab possible. In doing so, they set a high mark for coming together and getting things done. They also set an example for the rest of the state to follow.